


Through the Monsoon

by paperstorm



Series: Under the Dome [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Romance, Wakanda (Marvel), White Wolf Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 07:19:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17421494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: Steve’s expression is blank, empty, except for his eyes. A hardened, cold, unfeeling look is in his eyes, as they stare unseeing into the space in front of him. Bucky knows how this goes. It isn’t a regular occurrence, it's only happened a few times in the last half-year, but it isn’t good. Steve is an expert at shaking things off – which is either fortunate or unfortunate, depending on who’s asked about it – so when he can’t, it means things went really wrong.





	Through the Monsoon

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a direct sequel to my story [Tethered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15532290) but it does take place in the same timeline and head!canon, occurring about six months after that one ends. Not necessary to read that one first, although of course I'd be tickled if you did :)
> 
> Title is from the song "Monsoon" by Tokio Hotel.

A soft knocking sound pulls Bucky from a light sleep. He’s been here long enough that recently, noises in the night have stopped startling him into midnight panics, which is a minor miracle. He still doesn’t sleep as soundly as he should, but he can wake in the middle of the night to the sound of the wind or the rain and is able relatively quickly to rationalize it isn’t Hydra coming to take him back, or some other evil coming to hurt the people in the surrounding huts, and can roll back over and go back to sleep. Given the state he was in when he arrived nine months ago, Bucky’s pretty sure that alone constitutes an astonishing rate of recovery, even if his progress has been slower in other areas. At least he can sleep. He blinks in the darkness, his eyes trying to acclimate themselves to it, and looks over his shoulder toward the entrance to his hut.  
   
Nine months ago, the shadowy outline of an enormous, looming figure in his doorway would have had him up and swinging in the space of a heartbeat. It doesn’t anymore, because he’s used to this. Even in his groggy state, he knows what’s happening instantly, and he knows on practiced instinct what happens next. It’s the same every time.  
   
“Steve,” Bucky says softly, his voice scratchy from sleep.  
   
Steve doesn’t answer, or move further into the hut. He hovers, silent and stoic, by the doorway.  
   
Bucky reaches out to the edge of his bed, groping blindly in the darkness until his hand finds the kimoyo beads he keeps in a little wooden box. When he’s awake, they’re in his pocket, but they don’t feel very nice to roll on top of in sleep. The light they emit is harsh in the black room, and he squints as it stings his eyes, only keeps them active long enough to flip a quick text to Natasha –  _he’s here._ It’s all she’ll need. Steve’s team is also used to this. Steve always, always comes to visit Bucky in between missions, but usually he shows up the next morning, after his team has debriefed and cleaned up and made plans. On those occasions, Bucky doesn’t need to confirm Steve’s whereabouts, because his friends already know where he's headed. When he turns up in the middle of the night, it means he’d disappeared without telling them he was leaving. It also means something went wrong.  
   
He waits until the  _Good_ comes back from Natasha a few seconds later, and then gently places the beads back in their box. He pushes himself up to standing, muscles still weak because he’s not quite fully awake, and pads over to the corner to light the lamp that sits on a small set of shelves. It bathes the room in low, orange light, and Bucky blinks against that as well until his eyes get used to it. He looks, and his stomach twists painfully as he takes in Steve’s haggard appearance.  
   
His uniform is ripped in a few places, covered in dirt and grime and blood; likely not all of it Steve’s. Some of it is, though, Bucky realizes as he looks a little closer and sees nasty looking gashes of open skin. There is a purple bruise on his cheek, spreading over the bone and disappearing lower toward his jaw where his beard covers it. There’s dirt on his face, too, and in his hair. The way he’s unconsciously favoring his left wrist says it could be broken. Worst of all – and it’s always the worst part, when he shows up like this – Steve’s expression is blank, empty, except for his eyes. A hardened, cold, unfeeling look is in his eyes, as they stare unseeing into the space in front of him. Bucky knows how this goes. It isn’t a regular occurrence, it's only happened a few times in the last half-year, but it isn’t good. Steve is an expert at shaking things off – which is either fortunate or unfortunate, depending on who’s asked about it – so when he can’t, it means things went really wrong.  
   
It means Bucky will have to keep him here for a lot longer than he’ll want to stay. Steve comes to him like this in moments of broken, shattered weakness, but he’ll want to be back out in the field by tomorrow, so he can atone for his mistakes. Save a hundred people to make up for not being able to save one. Bucky knows from experience it will end in a fight between them. He also knows if Steve gets back out there without first taking some time to rest, he’ll be reckless and sloppy and a danger to the very people he’s trying to help. That’s Bucky’s role, in all this. He’d tried, three months into his new life in Wakanda, to join Steve and Natasha and Sam and Wanda in their covert operations. He’d wanted to help; he’d wanted, like Steve always does, to make amends for the lives he’d ruined by saving others. Steve had fought it tooth and nail, but Bucky had insisted, and joined them on a mission against a new faction of Hydra. It had ended disastrously. Bucky learned his lesson, painful as it was, and won’t ever do it again. He can’t fight anymore. Instead, he pays his dues to society with this; with being the place the former Captain America – Nomad, these days – can come to when he’s broken down and burned out and needing respite from the constant grind of battle. Bucky mends his wounds and his heart, stripping away the uniform and the title and the endless, crushing responsibilities. Bucky gives him a safe place to be  _Steve_ again, even if just for a few days. If he burns out too completely, he won’t be of use to anyone, so that’s the purpose Bucky serves, now. He stitches Steve back together when he’s fallen apart, so he can head back out and save the world.  
   
“Steve,” Bucky says again, and finally Steve looks at him.  
   
There’s something hollow in his expression. He blinks, like he’s only just noticed Bucky is standing there, and the recognition is there, but it’s muted. Bucky goes to him, happy at least that Steve doesn’t flinch when Bucky’s hand comes up to press lightly into the center of his chest. One time, Steve had flinched, and it had been a long time before Bucky could get that image out of his head. It broke his heart to think Steve was scared of him, even if it had only been for a second.  
   
“Hey there, soldier.” Bucky rubs his thumb over Steve’s uniform.  
   
Steve shakes his head. He looks helpless, and it doesn’t seem like he’s able to speak, yet. That’s alright, Bucky doesn’t need him to. He knows how this goes, anyway.  
   
“Let’s get you cleaned up, okay?”  
   
Still no response, so Bucky gets to work. He needs two hands for this, so he goes to the chest where he keeps his prosthetic and takes it out, untying the cloth that covers his shoulder and fitting the arm into it’s socket. After a moment it vibrates to life, and Bucky rolls it around a few times and flexes the fingers to check the range of motion. It’s always perfect, and he never knows why he needs to check. Shuri’s technology is leagues better than Hydra’s was. Bucky can even feel out of this arm. Not as much as his real arm, it isn’t quite the same, but when he touches with these vibranium fingertips, there is sensation. It’s miraculous.  
   
Steve is still standing motionless by the door, so Bucky takes both his hands and leads him further into the hut. His first step is to get Steve out of his tattered uniform so he can assess the damage, but Steve looks so lost this time that Bucky trips over his own emotions and can’t help but take a moment first. He takes Steve’s face in his hands, flesh and metal cupping his cheeks, and gently nudges Steve to look at him.  
   
“Hey,” Bucky says, waiting patiently until Steve will meet his eyes. “You’re safe now. You know that, right?”  
   
Steve nods. Finally,  _finally_ , he reacts the way Bucky’s been craving, and his hands reach out for Bucky’s hips. Bucky moves in closer, pressing the smallest kiss to Steve’s chin. Steve’s eyes slip closed, but he doesn’t move away.  
   
“Can I … I wanna hug you, is that okay?” Bucky asks, and Steve nods in response, so Bucky slides his arms around broad shoulders and pulls him in.  
   
Steve’s arms wrap around his waist, fingers on one hand squeezing handfuls of Bucky’s robes, hunching down so he’s smaller and burying his face into Bucky’s neck.  
   
“Shh,” Bucky murmurs to him, combing his metal fingers through Steve’s dirty hair. “I’ve got you. Everything’s alright.”  
   
“There was …” Steve breathes against his skin, harsh and miserable, “ … a little girl …”  
   
“Tomorrow.” Bucky squeezes his other hand around the back of Steve’s neck. “We’ll talk everything through tomorrow, I promise. Right now you need to rest, and we gotta fix you up first.”  
   
“I tried,” Steve whispers.  
   
“I know,” Bucky soothes. “I know you did. Everyone knows you did. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.”  
   
Steve doesn’t answer this time, he just clings tighter, and Bucky wishes he could just pull Steve into bed this second, but he can’t.  
   
He reluctantly moves away from the hug, and ignores the hurt look on Steve’s face, because he has to. He sets about unclipping buckles and pulling at zippers, methodically stripping Steve out of his complicated uniform, with all it’s extensive padding and hidden weapons compartments. Steve doesn’t have the shield anymore, so he carries knives and guns, now, tucked away in pouches along his flanks and down the sides of his legs. Bucky catalogues them in his mind as he removes them, noticing that a few are missing, and refusing to let his mind imagine why that might be. He moves material away to reveal bruised, sweaty skin, and grits his teeth against the wave of nausea when he’s forced to come face-to-face with how banged up Steve is this time. It’s much worse than it usually is. Angry, dark purple bruises and gashes caked with dried blood, that on a normal man would take weeks to heal. Their only saving grace is that Steve hasn’t been a normal man for nearly a century. By morning, most of the cuts will be half way to sealing themselves back up already, and the bruises will have faded significantly. There’s nothing Bucky needs to do to facilitate that healing; he just needs to clean the blood away.  
   
Once Steve is down to his underwear, Bucky reaches for the wrist he’s been holding differently that the other. He moves it, gently rolling it to feel for fractures. Steve winces slightly in response.  
   
“You think it’s broken?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t think so, based on the way the bones move easily under his fingers, but Steve is a better judge of his own body.  
   
Steve shakes his head. “Just hurts. It was crushed, under … but it’ll be fine by tomorrow.”  
   
Bucky nods. He’s right about that, but still wanting to reduce the pain if he can, Bucky finds one of the many strips of cloth he uses to cover his empty shoulder socket to act as a bandage. He winds it tightly, several times around the wrist, and then up over the back of Steve’s hand, across his palm, between his thumb and forefinger, and then back to the wrist. He pins it down when he runs out of cloth. Since the bones aren’t broken, they don’t need to be set, but they’re likely bruised and the muscles are strained. The makeshift bandage will at least limit how much Steve can move the joint, which will help it heal quicker.  
   
Steve sways a little on his feet as Bucky works, and Bucky sees the crash coming. Steve must have been running on sheer adrenaline since the end of their latest mission, perhaps spurred on by grief over the people he hadn’t been able to save this time and anger at himself for his perceived failings. He’d managed to get himself to Wakanda and to Bucky on nothing but leftover fumes, and they’re very quickly running out. Steve often crashes like this after difficult missions, and Bucky had been inconsolably furious at Steve’s team when he’d found out they don’t help him when he gets like this – that they just  _leave_ him to struggle through the chemical drop on his own. He’d been calmed only slightly when Natasha patiently explained how much Sam had  _tried_ to help Steve over the years, but in classic Steve Rogers fashion he’d refused the assistance; mistaking it for pity. Bucky was still angry about it, although his anger oscillates now between all of them; at Steve for not allowing his friends to be there for him, at Sam and Natasha for not pushing harder, and at himself for not keeping Steve here in Wakanda and never letting him leave again. The two of them, Bucky figures, have suffered more than enough. It’s well past time for someone else to take the mantle. The problem is, Steve would never agree to that, and Bucky can’t very well lock him up.  
   
“How long have you been awake?” Bucky asks. When Steve shrugs and doesn’t offer an answer, Bucky uses a sterner voice and says, “tell me.”  
   
“A few days." Steve's eyes are still closed, and he’s unsteady, and Bucky swears.  
   
He grabs the only chair he has in his possession; wooden and intricately carved, a gift from the village for helping them fix the roof on the school; and he sets it in the middle of the room and guides Steve into it.  
   
“M’fine,” Steve mumbles, but doesn’t resist Bucky’s hands.  
   
“You’re not fine,” Bucky argues. It isn’t the moment to yell at him about it, but Bucky wants to. He holds back only because he knows it would just make things worse, but he can’t resist griping at Steve, “you shouldn’t have flown the jet like this, could have passed out at the wheel and gotten yourself killed.”  
   
Steve’s posture changes. His shoulders slump and he curls in on himself, trying to make himself small, to cover his mostly naked body, and the brief flare of anger goes out of Bucky’s chest.  
   
He wraps his arms around Steve from behind, holding him for just a moment and kissing his cheek. “M’sorry. I’m happy you’re here, I’m always happy you’re here.”  
   
“I fucked up, Bucky.” He sounds utterly miserable, and it hurts in Bucky’s stomach.  
   
“No, you didn’t.” Bucky kisses his cheek again, and half expects Steve to counter him on it, but Steve doesn’t. “I’ll be right back, don’t move.”  
   
Bucky grabs an empty pitcher and takes it the few feet from his hut to the edge of the lake, filling it with cool water and bringing it back. He dips a piece of cloth into it and starts on Steve’s wounds, carefully washing away the grime and the dried blood. Steve winces a few times as Bucky wipes the cloth over deeper cuts, but he makes no noise as Bucky works. They’ll take him to the river in the morning and wash him more thoroughly, with soap, but this will do for tonight. As he finishes with Steve’s chest and arms, Bucky tips some water into his hands and runs it through Steve’s hair, brushing the dirt from the dark blond strands and combing it back off Steve’s head. It’s long, these days. Nowhere near as long as Bucky’s, but longer than it’s ever been. That, combined with the beard, makes Steve look older than he did when Bucky first found him, when he was brainwashed into being a weapon instead of a person, and the memory of Steve and their life together dragged him excruciatingly out of decades of Hydra programming.  
   
“Up,” Bucky says, once he’s finished, taking Steve’s ribcage in his hands and helping him to his feet. “Just for a minute.”  
   
Steve still wobbles on his feet, so Bucky is quick about finding a spare pair of robes and wrapping Steve in them; encasing him in soft Wakandan silk and tying knots at the shoulders to keep the garment in place. Steve’s eyes are closed again, and he looks ready to tip over sideways at any moment, so Bucky leads him to the mat where he sleeps, laying Steve down on it. He shuts the lamp off so darkness fills the room again, and climbs in next to Steve’s heavy, exhausted body.  
   
He lies on his side, facing Steve, and drags his fingers slowly through Steve’s hair. “Feelin’ any better?”  
   
“I …” Steve exhales heavily, and turns his face downward; hiding. Bucky hates when he does that.  
   
He moves forward, in close enough to tip Steve’s chin upwards with a bended finger and softly press a kiss to his lips.  
   
“Bucky,” Steve breathes against his mouth.  
   
“Stop,” Bucky says. He knows what Steve’s doing, and he can’t let him. He can feel the shame and the regret radiating off Steve with his body heat. “You are always welcome here. I’m sorry you’re hurting but I’m not sorry you’re here. I love you, stupid.”  
   
“Me too.” Steve’s uninjured hand reaches for Bucky’s hip again and tugs him in closer. “Please.”  
   
“Tell me what you need.”  
   
“You.” There’s a desperate edge to Steve’s voice, and Bucky can hear everything lurking underneath what he isn’t saying –  _make it better, make me feel again, make me yours._  
   
Bucky rolls on top of him, careful of the bandaged wrist, and kisses him. Slow and deep and heartfelt, he slides his lips against Steve’s, rolling down into him, pressing the top of his thigh between Steve’s legs where he finds heat and hardness. Steve grips him, so tight it’s like he’s terrified Bucky will vanish if he lets go, and Bucky stays close, stays kissing him, stays sliding against him. It doesn’t take long. Steve as keyed-up and exhausted as he is, he comes with a quiet shudder after only minutes, breathing heavily against Bucky’s cheek. Bucky doesn’t. He doesn’t care. This wasn’t about him.  
   
“She was …” Steve begins, before his breathing even slows, but Bucky cuts him off.  
   
“Tomorrow.” He reaches down to help Steve get his underwear off, so he doesn’t have to sleep in the mess. Then he pulls gently, gets Steve into his arms and against his chest, letting Steve use his shoulder as a pillow. He kisses Steve’s damp hair. “Tomorrow you can tell me everything. Right now you need to sleep.”  
   
“Buck. I …”  
   
“Sleep,” Bucky says again, murmuring softly to him. “I’m right here. I’ll be here when you wake up, too. I promise.”  
   
A half-hearted dispute rumbles from Steve’s chest but it’s short-lived, as Bucky rubs his back until all the tension goes from his shoulders and Steve drifts off. It’s a long time before Bucky follows him.

**Author's Note:**

> [come talk to me on tumblr if you want!](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/)


End file.
